DRUM Community: Human Development & Quantitative Methodologyhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2248
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 22:37:33 GMT2015-03-03T22:37:33ZDIFFERENT APPROACHES TO COVARIATE INCLUSION IN THE MIXTURE RASCH MODELhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16256
Title: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO COVARIATE INCLUSION IN THE MIXTURE RASCH MODEL
Authors: Li, Tongyun
Abstract: The present dissertation project investigates different approaches to adding covariates and the impact in fitting mixture item response theory (IRT) models. Mixture IRT models serve as an important methodology for tackling several important psychometric issues in test development, including detecting latent differential item functioning (DIF). A Monte Carlo simulation study is conducted in which data generated according to a two-class mixture Rasch model (MRM) with both dichotomous and continuous covariates are fitted to several MRMs with misspecified covariates to examine the effects of covariate inclusion on model parameter estimation. In addition, both complete response data and incomplete response data with different types of missingness are considered in the present study in order to simulate practical assessment settings. Parameter estimation is carried out within a Bayesian framework vis-à-vis Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Two empirical examples using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 U.S. reading assessment data are presented to demonstrate the impact of different specifications of covariate effects for an MRM in real applications.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/162562014-01-01T00:00:00ZMODELING MULTIPLE SOURCE USE: USING LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS AND SOURCE USE BEHAVIORS TO PREDICT RESPONSE QUALITYhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16254
Title: MODELING MULTIPLE SOURCE USE: USING LEARNER CHARACTERISTICS AND SOURCE USE BEHAVIORS TO PREDICT RESPONSE QUALITY
Authors: List, Alexandra
Abstract: Multiple source use (MSU) has been identified as both a critical competency and a key challenge for today's students, living in the digital age (Goldman & Scardamalia, 2013b). Theoretical models of multiple source use provide insights into how the MSU process unfolds and identify points at which students may encounter challenges (i.e., in source selection, processing, and evaluation, Rouet & Britt). However, understandings of MSU have been limited by two gaps in the literature. First, while points of challenge in students' MSU process have been examined independently, comprehensive models considering the joint role of source selection, processing, and evaluation in task performance have not been fully investigated. Further, while research on MSU has focused on students' behaviors when engaging with texts, individual difference factors have been considered only to a limited extent, despite their theorized importance (Rouet, 2006).
The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which multiple source use behaviors (i.e., source selection, processing, and evaluation) and learner characteristics (i.e., prior knowledge, domain general source evaluation behaviors, stances on the target issue) predicted open-ended task performance, both independently and in conjunction with one another.
Participants were 197 undergraduate students, asked to complete measures assessing their prior knowledge, stances on the Arab Spring in Egypt, the topic of the task, and domain general source evaluation behaviors. Then, participants were tasked with using a library of six sources to respond to a controversial prompt about a contemporary event (i.e., Arab Spring in Egypt). While students engaged with sources, log data of source use were collected (e.g., number of sources accessed, time on texts) and participants were asked to rate sources accessed in terms of trustworthiness, usefulness, and interestingness. Four indices were used to assess open-ended response quality: (a) word count, (b) the number of arguments included in students' responses, (c) scores on the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982), reflecting the extent to which students' responses integrated and evaluated information presented across texts, and (d) the number of citations in students' answers.
Key findings included the role of students' ratings of source interestingness and time on texts as predictive of open-ended task performance. Further, students' accessing of document information about sources (e.g., author credentials that may aid in source evaluation, Britt & Aglinskas, 2002) and trustworthiness evaluations were found to be associated with SOLO scores. Overall, as compared to multiple source use behaviors, learner characteristics were found to have a more limited effect on task performance. Findings are discussed and implications for theoretical conceptions of multiple source use and instructional practice are presented.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/162542014-01-01T00:00:00ZHumor and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhoodhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16163
Title: Humor and Friendship Quality in Middle Childhood
Authors: Wimsatt, Maureen Ann
Abstract: Both humor and friendship facilitate socio-emotional development in middle childhood, but scholars have not studied the relation between the two constructs. Specifically, researchers have not explored the relation between affiliative, aggressive and/or self-defeating spontaneous conversational humor and positive and negative friendship quality in middle childhood. Scholars theorize that affiliative spontaneous conversational humor contributes to positive friendship quality while aggressive and self-defeating spontaneous conversational humor contribute to negative friendship quality (Klein & Kuiper, 2006). Moreover, friends' social behaviors are often interdependent and "work together" to influence each child's perception of friendship (Bukowski, Motzoi, & Meyer, 2009); therefore, it is also expected that dyadic spontaneous conversational humor is associated with friendship quality in middle childhood and that dyad-level variables (i.e., behavioral similarity of dyad, duration of friendship) are related to the dyadic nature of children's spontaneous conversational humor production.
Participants were 250 fifth graders (125 dyads; M age = 10.33 years, SD = .54) from the Washington DC metropolitan area. Affiliative, aggressive, and self-defeating spontaneous conversational humor data were coded from videotaped discussion between mutually nominated, same-sex best friends. Positive and negative friendship quality data were collected via survey report. An Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was used to explore relations between actor and partner spontaneous conversational humor and actor-rated friendship quality in middle childhood (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). Finally, multiple regression analyses were used to test the direct effects of dyad-level variables on dyadic spontaneous conversational humor.
APIM analyses revealed significant positive relations between actor affiliative spontaneous conversational humor and actor-rated absence of conflict and betrayal; actor self-defeating spontaneous conversational humor and both actor-rated intimate disclosure and total positive friendship quality; and partner self-defeating spontaneous conversational humor and actor-rated companionship. Actor affiliative and actor aggressive spontaneous conversational humor production were negatively and positively associated with actor-rated negative interactions, respectively. Five dyadic actor-partner interactions were significantly related to positive and negative friendship quality. Multiple regression analyses indicated that friendship duration was negatively associated with dyadic aggressive spontaneous conversational humor, meaning that the longer best friends reported knowing each other, the less they used interrelated aggressive spontaneous conversational humor.Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/161632014-01-01T00:00:00ZUsing a high-dimensional graph of semantic space to model relationships among wordshttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/15848
Title: Using a high-dimensional graph of semantic space to model relationships among words
Authors: Jackson, Alice F.; Bolger, Donald J.
Abstract: The GOLD model (Graph Of Language Distribution) is a network model constructed based on co-occurrence in a large corpus of natural language that may be used to explore what information may be present in a graph-structured model of language, and what information may be extracted through theoretically-driven algorithms as well as standard graph analysis methods. The present study will employ GOLD to examine two types of relationship between words: semantic similarity and associative relatedness. Semantic similarity refers to the degree of overlap in meaning between words, while associative relatedness refers to the degree to which two words occur in the same schematic context. It is expected that a graph structured model of language constructed based on co-occurrence should easily capture associative relatedness, because this type of relationship is thought to be present directly in lexical co-occurrence. However, it is hypothesized that semantic similarity may be extracted from the intersection of the set of first-order connections, because two words that are semantically similar may occupy similar thematic or syntactic roles across contexts and thus would co-occur lexically with the same set of nodes. Two versions the GOLD model that differed in terms of the co-occurence window, bigGOLD at the paragraph level and smallGOLD at the adjacent word level, were directly compared to the performance of a well-established distributional model, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The superior performance of the GOLD models (big and small) suggest that a single acquisition and storage mechanism, namely co-occurrence, can account for associative and conceptual relationships between words and is more psychologically plausible than models using singular value decomposition (SVD).
Description: Funding for Open Access provided by the UMD Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.Mon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 GMThttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/158482014-05-12T00:00:00Z